Ali-Frazier: Kilroy was there

AS MUHAMMAD Ali's longtime business manager and a former employee of the Eagles who knew Joe Frazier for over 45 years, Gene Kilroy has maybe as much personal knowledge of the legendary archrivals as anyone.

Sadly, Smokin' Joe died yesterday after a brief fight with advanced-stage liver cancer at 67.

Recently, I called Gene in Las Vegas, where he is an executive host for the Luxor, to ask for some of his memories of the Ali-Frazier relationship, which at times has been as surprisingly tender as it is publicly tempestuous.

Take the aftermath of "The Fight of the Century," the March 8, 1971, first meeting in Madison Square Garden in which Frazier floored Ali with a leaping left hook in the 15th round en route to scoring a unanimous decision. Although he won, and deservedly so, Frazier, whose blood pressure had shot up to the danger level, spent several weeks in St. Luke's Hospital to rest and recuperate.

"I was contacted by Budd Schulberg [the noted writer] who said he heard a rumor that Joe had died," Kilroy recalled. "Ali, who also was pretty beaten up after that great fight, started shaking like a leaf when I told him what Budd said. He said, 'If Joe dies, I'll never fight again. I'll quit boxing.'

"Everybody talks about how Ali and Joe supposedly hated each other, but Ali didn't hate anybody. He respected Joe. He'd always say that in that first fight, nobody could have beaten Joe. He said, 'Joe Frazier would have knocked out King Kong that night.' And he really believed that.

"But Joe - and I love the guy - couldn't get past some of the things Ali, being Ali, said to the media for publicity purposes. Joe told me, 'How would you like it if your kids went to school and the other kids were calling you ignorant and a gorilla?' He always thought Ali carried the act way too far."

Kilroy first met Frazier when Gene was attached to the Army fighters competing at the 1964 U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials. Frazier, who initially lost out on an Olympic berth to Buster Mathis (Frazier later replaced Mathis, who had broken his hand, and won the heavyweight gold medal in Tokyo), became fast friends with Bobby Carmody, a 112-pound soldier who also was on the Olympic team that went to Japan.